It’s a pity that the category of tournaments seems to be the most important thing these days. There are lower rated players around who are capable of the most fantastic chess but many of them get very little opportunity to display their skills.

Anyway, here’s a fabulous combinative game by the Danish International Master Carsten Hoi. I think it’s one of the most brilliant games ever played.

The death of Jacqueline Piatigorsky, after reaching a century, marks the passing of one of the twentieth century’s most influential chess figures. A member of the Rothschild banking family she married the cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky, in 1937. She played chess for the US in the 1957 Women’s Olympiad, taking a bronze medal, and played in several US Women’s Championships.

It was an organizer that she particularly shone, arranging the Fischer – Reshevsky match in 1961 and then the two great Piatigorsky Cup tournaments in 1963 and 1966 in which many of the World’s leading players took part. The tournament books of these two events are classics.

The following Bobby Fischer game, played at the second Piatigorsky Cup, is considered to be a classical example of how to play White in this line of the King’s Indian Attack. Fischer’s plan of 8.Nh4 followed by f2-f4 was new at the time:

After my previous post someone kindly drew my attention to a lengthy analysis of the incident by Edward Winter. Wilhelm Steinitz’s depiction of the incident (in the November 1889 International Chess Magazine) is quite detailed and likely to be kind of accurate. But the pre-punch conversation is not included in any detail. ‘Dreckseele, by the way, is the famous though clueless chess writer, Leopold Hoffer:

Allow me to tell you, Dreckseele, that you lie again deliberately with your usual Long Champs lying insolence, when you talk of Blackburne having merely smacked my right, “both here at Purssell’s and during the Paris Tournament at the hotel”. Here is my version, Dreckseele. Blackburne suffered some 22 or respectively 11 years ago even more frequently from fits of blackguardism on the J.Y. Dreck principle, which you and all your Dreck chums worship, than he does now. And on one occasion at Purssell’s about 1867, in a dispute between us, he struck with his full fist into my eye, which he blackened and might have knocked out. And though he is a powerful man of very nearly twice my size, who might have killed me with a few such strokes, I am proud to say that I had the courage of attempting to spit into his face, and only wish I had succeeded, Dreckseele. And on the second occasion, in Paris, we occupied adjoining rooms at the same hotel, and I was already in bed undressed when he came home drunk and began to quarrel, and after a few words he pounced upon me and hammered at my face and eyes with fullest force about a dozen blows, until the bedcloth and my nightshirt were covered with blood. But at last I had the good fortune to release myself from his drunken grip, and I broke the window pane with his head, which sobered him down a little. And you know well enough too, Dreckseele, if any confirmation of anything I say were needed, that the same heroic Blackburne performed a similar act of bravery on a sickly young man, Mr Israel, who died some years afterward, and whom he publicly gave a black eye at Purssell’s during his first match with Gunsberg. And you also know, Dreckseele, that this gallant Blackburne struck in a similar manner, publicly, in the City of London Chess Club, the secretary, Mr Walker, as nice a little gentleman as I ever met, who was even a head and shoulder shorter in stature than myself, and who has also, I am sorry to learn, died since. And I may tell you, moreover, Dreckseele, that this brave Blackburne, whose blackguardly fisticuff performances you want to glorify at my expense, has never to my knowledge struck a man of his own size, unless it were in the case of an assault on board ship, during his journey to Australia, for which he was fined £10 at the police court, on his landing in Melbourne. And if your valiant Blackburne, Dreckseele, is not thoroughly ashamed of such performances by this time, he would deserve to be spat upon by any gentleman, just as I spit upon you now, Dreckseele … And in my opinion, Dreckseele, poor Blackburne cannot redeem himself otherwise than by giving you a sound thrashing, Dreckseele, for having without his authority, I assume, dragged his name and a falsified account of his conduct toward myself into the controversy, thus compelling me to give my version of his performances, most reluctantly, I must say, for I am thoroughly ashamed of it on behalf of chess in general, but in no way, Dreckseele, on my own account personally.

It seems that Joseph Henry Blackburne was not a man to be trifled with, though one does wonder why he should have picked on Steinitz. Here anyway is a Steinitz brilliancy:

Yesterday my son and I had a long discussion about the incident(s) between Wilhelm Steinitz and Joseph Henry Blackburne in which Steinitz is supposed to have spat at his opponent and Blackburne punched Steinitz through a window, giving him a black eye in the process. Sources differ as to whether Steinitz spat before or after the punch but we rather think that Steinitz must have spat first. A punch would surely require an upping of the ante or ‘masterful inactivity’ rather than a futile gesture which might further provoke the attacker.

Joseph Henry Blackburne

This brings me to the question of the role that physical intimidation might play in a chess game. I think a certain physical presence can be a factor and others seem to agree with me. Vasily Smyslov learned to box before his match against the boxer, Efim Geller, presumably to avoid any feeling of being physically vulnerable.

On the other hand any sense of vulnerability didn’t stop Steinitz from winning his two matches against Blackburne and by very decisive margins. Yet Blackburne did manage to pull off an occasional win against his great adversary, for example the following game.